


Law and Custom

by Zither



Series: Beneath the Ironwood Tree [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mild Gore, Reluctant Allies to Friends, Snark, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, The Dark Age (Destiny), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 15:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12728928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zither/pseuds/Zither
Summary: Felwinter and Efrideet go on patrol, get into a fight, and learn all about the power of friendship. Sort of in that order.





	Law and Custom

“What's worse? Killing or stealing?”

Felwinter, who was examining a pile of loose snow, did not look up until Efrideet slid down the side of the hollow he knelt in and landed on her toes with a crunch. She dug at the ground, creating patterns in one instant and destroying them in the next. It was clear she planned to hover there until he gave her a response, and in any case, he was no tracker. Anyone could see the snow had been disturbed, but all he’d been able to detect was the faint shadow of a footprint pointing to nowhere. With an internal huff, he gave it up for a bad job and stood. Efrideet, of course, took that as an invitation.

“Jolder says unprovoked killing’s always worse, but Perun-“

Driven by an urge that was not quite exasperation, Felwinter cut across her. “What do you think?” 

Taken aback, she hesitated. That flicker of uncertainty made her seem even more youthful. Reckoning human growth was difficult enough without adding immortal agelessness into the mix, but he didn’t think she could have been more than a couple of years into adulthood when she died. Young in body and younger still in Light; it made for a dangerous combination. 

“I think stealing's worse if it's a Risen,” she said at last, “but killing's worse if it's a mortal, and half the time there isn't even any difference. If you take their blankets, they freeze. If you take their water, they dry up. If you take their food, the skin falls off their bones.” Her brow was furrowed. “They die of everything. What's the point of them?”

Felwinter blinked a wave of magenta laughter at her. “Spoken like a true warlord.”

Even this deliberate attempt at offence did not seem to perturb her. Bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, she waited his amusement out. Much to his annoyance, what he could see of her face behind the muffler bore the same sort of patient expression Lord Saladin always wore before urging him to be serious. She still thought he could provide her with a sensible answer. He felt an inexplicable urge to try.

“Well,” he said, suppressing the derisive internal voice that demanded to know what he was doing, “fragility notwithstanding, they have certain capacities we lack.”

Had she blinked even once since the beginning of their conversation? He didn’t think so. Her eyes were very bright. “Like what capacities?”

“Self-replication, for one.” _When did you become a champion of mortalkind?_ the same scornful little voice asked. Again, he ignored it. “The organics, anyway.”

Efrideet regarded him, head to one side. For a long, dreadful moment, he thought she was about to ask him how they replicated themselves. Instead, she said, “Why is your coat so long?”

“What?”

“It’s just not very practical.” Uncowed by his glare, she put her hands on her hips as if to emphasise the superiority of her sartorial choices. “I mean, your hem is always filthy. You should get a short travelling cloak that won’t trail along the ground. I bet Gheleon would stitch you one, if you asked.”

After a picosecond’s worth of silent sputtering, Felwinter decided not to dignify that with a response. He’d agreed to let her tail him on the condition that she not interfere with his patrol in any way, but he’d forgotten to add a clause about critiquing his choice of outerwear. Perhaps he ought to have anticipated the need for it. Turning his face up to the noonday sun’s indistinct greyness, he said, “Time to move on.”

“I thought we were supposed to be tracking them,” Efrideet said, and lifted her chin when he shot a ruby-speckled look at her. “The prints go that way. South by south-west.” And she pointed, just to rub it in.

 _You shut up_ , Felwinter thought, even as Mink’s laughter intensified. Up until now, she had been a mere murmur on the edge of his consciousness; Efrideet’s presence almost felt like a fair trade-off for the quiet in his head. He suspected she’d spent the time in conversation with Efrideet’s Ghost, though he had no way of proving it. Her amusement was an itch behind his eyes, a tickle at the nape of his neck: two irritants he’d thought himself immune to. Shaking his head in futile displeasure, he tamped down on his pride and made to follow Efrideet into the brightness. 

She was focused; he’d allow her that much. For a moment, he could have sworn he heard her sniffing the air as she strode on ahead. Feral instincts, he supposed. As distasteful as the recollection was, he’d been the same way once.

 _Not so much with the sniffing_ , Mink said, latching on to the tail end of his thought, _but yes, in other respects_. A pause. _It needn’t have happened to her, you know._

_Is this guilt? Are you guilting me? ___

____

____

_Of course not. She ran away._ An organic might have chosen to go the nostalgic route, categorised the pauses as breaths or beats. Mink, absent the capacity for either, still knew how to use them in service of dramatic effect. _We just didn’t try very hard to chase her._

 _I suppose you’d prefer it if she were like one of Citan’s tithes,_ Felwinter returned. If it were possible for an Exo using thought-speech to bite words out, he would have done. _Dutiful, compliant, and shackled to us for the rest of her immortal life. Would that be an improvement?_ Without waiting for a reply, he lifted his head to watch Efrideet’s progress again. She strode spring-heeled across the snow as if his entire domain belonged to her - no, as if she belonged to it. A fine distinction, but no less vital for that.

Instead of the acidic response he had been expecting, Mink said his name in a low, urgent tone. It was a pointless gesture; as regrettably close as the bond between them was, he could not fail to notice what she noticed. His own Light residue was a constant background hum, vibrating at a pitch Lady Skorri had identified before she so much as deigned to speak to him. There were whole melodies competing with that single-string strain now; his guests’ leavings, scattered across the land. Efrideet’s were especially fresh, as close as she was. As he slowed, she drew the folds of her power in tight and leapt seven full feet straight up. At the height of her jump, she drove her heels downward against unresisting air and propelled herself higher. Her Ghost shot off towards a gap in the cloud layer, hung there like a low-slung star, and then came zooming back to earth at speeds the average meteorite would have found quite respectable. As exasperating as their lack of discipline was, Felwinter couldn’t quash the flicker of admiration that stirred within him. It was an inefficient technique, to be sure; the energy yield was three times what he expended in a medium-length glide. No doubt she’d come up with some way to justify that if he pointed it out, even as she’d tried to convince him to swap his perfectly functional coat for a lightweight, pocketless fashion cloak. Still, he couldn’t deny its potential usefulness; perhaps as a more precise means of getting to hard-to-reach places…

A second after her feet touched the ground, Efrideet froze. She’d caught wind of the oddity at last, Felwinter thought, and refused to feel even a trace of smugness at the fact that he’d outdone her on this one. She might be better at detecting physical signs of disturbance, but when it came to fluctuations in Light-

It was his turn to freeze. Without turning around, she’d tugged at him; a sharp yank, as solidly physical as if she were pulling on a cord wound around his waist. On the heels of that sensation, he felt a wave of unfettered battle-fury wash over him. Somehow, he managed to check it. Up ahead, he saw Efrideet fall into a more cautious, measured stance. The shock of it eclipsed his other concerns for a moment. Picking up on the details of colour or texture that denoted emotion and intent in fellow warlords had always been an important survival skill of his, but this… this two-way tithing was a new dimension of the possible. He dug for the root, found a braided rope leading from the core of his power to hers; temporary and frayed, but with the potential to strengthen. With mounting horror, he wondered what other mindsets might bleed over into his next. Lord Silimar’s wide-eyed naïveté? Lady Jolder’s perpetual cheer? Lord Saladin’s merciful heart? Efrideet’s indiscriminate bloodlust seemed almost desirable by comparison.

“Hey!” the source of his turmoil said, crossing half the distance between them in a single bound. “I called you.”

“You called me,” Felwinter repeated, _not_ dumbly. He was hedging in order to address the situation. A snicker ought to have been forthcoming from Mink, but she seemed as thrown as he was.

“That’s what I said.” Efrideet regarded him for a second, eyes just visible above her muffler. “Anyone would think you’d never felt a shout before.”

Silence, except for the soft stirrings of wind and Light.

“Oh.” Under different circumstances, Felwinter would have congratulated himself for surprising her at last. She wavered a little. “Well, you have now? Anyway…” and on this word, she lowered her voice, “I shouted for you because there are enemies afoot.”

“Yes, I know,” Felwinter said, lights flickering a waspish indigo. “And if they were unobservant enough to miss your leaping around like a buck in full flight, there might be some point in whispering.” Raising his voice, he cried, “Who is that cloaking attempt supposed to fool? Run back to Citan’s Ridge, tithes, or stand and face me here!”

“And me,” Efrideet added, with some indignation. She stepped up to stand shoulder to shoulder with him - shoulder to cheek, in all honesty. His lack of height had never been a disadvantage before, but it was still startling to find himself so towered over. A petty concern. Dismissing it, he focused the bulk of his attention on their immediate surroundings. Now that the intruders had given up on trying to hide themselves, he could discern the break they left in his land’s pattern with ease. They were sour green notes in an otherwise-familiar song, daubs of clashing colour on a wall at the Peak; unknown, unwanted presences, each one crouching in a hollow or tucked away behind a rise.

Sharp as this new awareness was, it did not allow him to divine exact numbers or positions. He was startled, then, when a figure rose out of the pale expanse not two hundred metres ahead of him. There was a gully up ahead, he remembered, made deceptively shallow by endless snowfalls. They could have buried themselves just beneath the top layer, protected by internal heat or cold, lying in wait until he and Efrideet drew near. And he had mocked their powers of concealment! Another emerged on the heels of the first; as they made their advance, two more shadows slunk around from the right to back them up. A Ghost came into view over one of the western hillocks. Out on surveillance, Felwinter assumed, and just now following the leash back to her charge… but no, there was her true companion, weaving to and fro between mounds of snow in their haste. Almost a full raiding party, and there were no mortal minions waiting in the wings; every one of the five was a Lightbearer. Felwinter worked hard to tamp down on his astonishment. Citan had sent cannon fodder onto his lands before, indentured servants and slaves who fled at the sound of a harsh word. He guarded the lives and Light of his immortal lackeys more jealously. How many had he managed to gather to him? Did these new arrivals postdate their little spat?

As the unit drew closer, they began to bunch up. He felt rather than saw Efrideet’s fingers twitch toward the weighted throwing knives on her belt, and said, low, “No. That’s not how this is done.” To his amazement, she listened. Her shoulders drew up almost to her ears as she watched Citan’s agents approach, but her hands stayed limp and quiescent at her sides.

When they were close enough, he called, “You cross into the domain of Lord Felwinter.”

“We do,” said the leader, a heavyset warrior clad all in grey. Like Efrideet, she wore a muffler that covered all but a strip of skin and two brilliant eyes. Too brilliant. She was Awoken, Felwinter realised; dead and returned twice over. All the others, as far as he could tell, were human.

And none of them seemed inclined to take the out he had offered. Still, propriety demanded he give them a few more chances. “State your purpose here.”

The big Awoken toed up a clod of snow in an insolent manner. “Scouting.”

“Liar!” Efrideet exploded. Propriety fled, and Felwinter suppressed a sigh. “You’re not-you-you came here in numbers fit for a raid! Your signatures are all tangled up together, just like ours before a fight…” She ran out of breath and stood there, gasping. He felt again that rush of emotion, more manageable now he knew from whence it stemmed. Her fire was very close to the skin. She was ready to kill, perhaps even to make an end.

Their enemies could tell. The leader blinked, caught herself before she could take a step back. “Can’t you restrain her?”

“Perhaps you should try it,” Felwinter said, “and pass the results on to me.” There was no sense in delaying any further. All hope of a quick, quiet, straightforward patrol had long since left him. “I don’t suppose Citan would be too happy if you returned to him without even trying to stake a claim.”

A flicker of muscle, just beneath the bright eyes. “I don’t suppose he would.”

“Why do you follow Citan in the first place?” said Efrideet, in a voice more subdued than before. She had noticed the same flicker.

The Awoken looked her up and down, gaze lingering on the shabby wolfskin cloak she always wore. “It beats the alternative.”

Efrideet missed the implication, or else didn’t care. Knowing her, Felwinter suspected the latter. “If any of the others treated me badly, I’d never have become an Iron Lord -“

“Hsst,” Felwinter growled, but the wash of static was not enough to cover her words. The Awoken woman’s eyes crinkled up at the corners; she was smiling. Pleased, he thought, but not surprised.

“Thanks for the confirmation.” That sentence was addressed to Efrideet, who shuffled from one foot to the other in a rare display of shame. The leader turned back to him. “We knew you were meeting with Timur - yes, shine away, we _do_ watch the Mothyards - but all of them? Lord Citan has enough to worry about without a slew of nosy neighbours quibbling over the way he runs his house, don’t you think?”

“Is Citan opposed to making friends now?” Felwinter said, keeping his voice steady and his lights constant. “That didn’t seem to be the case last time he begged me to go crawling back to him.”

“Depends what you do with those friends, my lord Felwinter,” the leader said. Her voice was soft with anger; the kind that sprung from loyalty, not mere coercion. “Depends whether those friends are a group of highly-skilled insurgents who’ve declared their intent to bring down society as we know it, the society our kind built on embers and ashes…”

“Insurgents?” Efrideet blurted. All eyes turned to her. “It’s just… you make us sound so organised. Perun says trying to get us all to agree on a course of action is like herding cats, whatever that means.”

“Not helping, Efrideet,” Felwinter muttered. The whole group was hanging off her words. No doubt they would run back to Citan with a report: _straight from the wolf’s mouth, the Iron Lords are a ragtag band of heroes._ He hoped it would prove false. “I think this negotiation has run its course, don’t you?”

“Border skirmish rules?” A woman at the back of the group spoke first, directing the question to her commander.

The leader shook her head. “Last one standing.” Then, to Felwinter: “No beheadings. No whipping out that gun of yours. Agreeable?”

“I am.” A good choice, he thought ruefully. His and Efrideet’s numbers disadvantage would matter less in a border skirmish, but they could not be seen to back down now. One more formality remained. “May I know the name of my challenger?”

For a long moment, it seemed as if she would abandon protocol altogether. At last, she said, “Eisa. Bound to serve Lord Citan.”

The others were silent; a single name was enough. Before he could communicate this to Efrideet, she spoke. “Efrideet. Bound to serve nobody.”

One man, perhaps the company’s second, let out his breath in a hiss. Eisa herself did not react, except to sweep Efrideet with a glance that held more pity than anything else. Then she gestured to her companions. Without a word, they began to withdraw, fanning out as they went. Felwinter followed suit, widening the gulf between them. He had been more than a little afraid that Efrideet would simply take off after their opponents, but to his relief, she remained at his side. Small flurries of snow scattered around their feet, disturbed by the rising wind as much as their passage. New clouds had come scudding in from the west while they butted heads, bringing with them a promise of worse weather. Several sunbeams still struggled through; the rearing cloudbank was tinged with a dull, smoky radiance.

“So we just fight them now?” The usual eagerness was back in Efrideet’s voice, but a rare note of caution lurked underneath it. “Five against two?”

“That’s irrelevant. We accept the challenge, or we refuse and cede our land.” He ran another check on the enemy positions, then turned back to find Efrideet staring at him. “What?”

“You said _our_ land.”

A flash of light darted across Felwinter’s face, too quickly for him to control or corral it. He let it go. “Last one standing means no revives for anyone, not until combat is over. Break that rule and the challenge is void.”

“Hear that?” Mink added to Alambil, who was darting back and forth as if the whole endeavour were a grand game. “You can’t resurrect her, and we can’t help you. She won’t be able to call it if she’s dead, so you’ll have to use your own judgement to determine when the fight’s ended.”

Grumbling, Alambil subsided. After resting in Efrideet’s cupped hands for a moment, she consented to return to the travel pouch. Mink had been a mere weight in Felwinter’s pocket for the duration of their exchange with Citan’s people, but now a new impression from her brought him up short: not so much a wave of encouragement as total certainty. How often had he mistaken that feeling for confidence in himself?

There was no time to ponder it. Across the field, Eisa raised a glimmering fist. He returned the gesture, then drew the shining strands together to form a globe of light. Holding it caged in his palm, he said, “Nothing permanent, remember. No touching Ghosts.”

“I know that!” Efrideet’s tone fell somewhere between outrage and scandal. “People don’t have to be told. Not even me.”

It had been a little much. He blinked an apology at her, felt a flicker of surprised amusement from Mink. Efrideet’s mouth stayed tight, but she gave him a return nod. There was no time to say more. The globe in his hand pulsed brighter; opening his fingers, he let it fly. As it rose, spinning sideways on its axis, strange shadows began to twist and dance their way across the battlefield. It came to a halt some fifty feet above their heads, eclipsing the midday sun at its zenith.

The signal need not be so elaborate, of course; he was simply showing off. Eisa’s plain flare guttered, and he felt an unworthy twinge of smugness that Mink picked up and echoed back to him. He used the pause as an opportunity to whisper, “Don’t be intimidated by their numbers. They tithe to Citan, and he’s a damned fool who takes too much without giving them time to replenish…” Aware of Efrideet’s uncomprehending look, he repressed his disgust. “They’re weaker than us, even working in concert. Don’t forget it.”

Eisa’s signal went off like a rocket, showering the snow around her in stars. Before it could fade, Felwinter tore a clot of energy from the void, shaped it into a sphere far colder and more volatile than the first, and hurled it shrieking across the field into the heart of their foes’ defence.

Just in time, Eisa threw up a wall. The sphere detonated right in front of it, sending a tidal wave of snow into the sky and knocking one unlucky flank man off his feet. Even Eisa herself, safe as she was at the centre of her own shield, staggered. The wall already resembled a sheet of Golden Age glass, spiderwebs of ordinary mortal air delineating its weaknesses. Efrideet let out a whoop and hared off in the direction of their opponents, heedless of any projectiles that might come her way. A spear took shape in her hand as she ran; it shone dull bronze for no longer than a second before streams of golden flame began to wend their way from haft to tip. She infused her Light into objects without visible effort, following the same instinct that drove Felwinter himself to reach out to touch the universe. Really, the potential applications were limitless… A ball of flame landed near him, sputtering as the snow around it began to melt; he leapt, trusting his life to the air, and floated over the explosion with metres to spare. He was hot on Efrideet’s heels now. Without slowing, she snatched a throwing knife off her belt and set it afire with a touch. It flew as true as her knives always did, embedding itself at the thinnest point of Eisa’s shield. For a turn of the pump, two turns, it seemed as if their wall would hold. Then it shattered, the breaking-glass effect at odds with the lack of accompanying sound.

“Scatter!” Eisa roared. The command was unnecessary; most of her comrades had anticipated the charge of cold energy building in Felwinter’s hand and flung themselves every which way to escape it. He let it dissipate. Worth a try. At the very least, he’d given Efrideet an opening. She took immediate advantage of their disarray, darting in to harry an unfortunate soul whose leap had taken him further away than the others. Her spear was a line of heat in Felwinter’s peripheral vision as he batted away swarms of projectiles. Stuck on the defensive, her opponent could do nothing but dodge. He fumbled for the sword at his waist, channelling a surge of Light down his free arm as he did so; it was a clumsy manoeuvre, one Efrideet punished with a sharp, fiery rap across the back of each hand. The man cried out, and his innate, invisible shield became tangible for a second. Long enough that Felwinter could map its hidden contours in his mind, might even have been able to pull it apart if he were closer - but Efrideet did not need the help, and in any case, he was otherwise occupied. The rest were attempting to regroup. One of them made a dash toward her beleaguered companion, brought up short when Efrideet let go of the spear with her left hand and drew another blazing knife. Eisa’s second, who had been on the shield’s outer edge, started circling around to rejoin his commander. A single, aimless movement from Felwinter stopped him in his tracks. Four of them, and they were afraid to rush either him or Efrideet! He let his contempt shine through, certain they would be able to read it in his face.

Eisa could, and it galled her. She made a quick splay-handed gesture, warning her subordinates to stay spread out. As feeble as their Light might be, the strategy was not without merit. They were too far apart to be shut down in one fell swoop, but close enough to offer each other aid in a pinch - all but the one who Efrideet, a true hunter, had separated from the herd. She had driven him almost to the lip of the gully. That battle would not last long, and then she’d be free to assist him with the others…

The second-in-command sidestepped, edging away from Eisa. At the same time, she began a cautious approach. Felwinter tagged them both as priority targets, reserving a smaller share of his attention for the other two. Not quite enough; when the one who had tried to rush Efrideet translocated, it caught him off guard.

She didn’t manage to cross the full distance. He was surprised she’d had the energy to attempt it at all. Instead, she reappeared several feet in front of him, flinging up her hands as she stumbled forward. The resulting wash of energy was no more than an irritant, but it diverted him long enough for the others to draw in their net. The furthest out, whom he’d identified as weaker than her teammates, hurled a ball of arc light at him with all her strength. He dodged and juked, correcting his estimation of her as he did so; she must have held her power in reserve, keeping it close to the bone while the others slung projectiles. The jump took him back toward Eisa and her second, who were now running in at two different angles. They would close with him in a few turns, and the daring one had recovered enough to reach for her sword.

In half the time it took her to do that, he drew on a well of void energy and detonated it around her. The backwash shook him, but he kept his footing. When the atoms settled, there was a new crater in the earth and a forlorn Ghost hovering at its epicentre.

In the distance, Efrideet whooped. Eisa and her second skidded to a halt, snow spraying over the tops of their boots. With grim pleasure, he saw them edge even further away from each other - as if they were not already too far apart to be caught in a single blast, and as if he could summon the energy to draw up another so soon. Let them continue to overestimate his current limits; perhaps one day, they would be correct. In truth, he was not sure how well he would fare if they rushed him now. An icy cold filled the hollow spaces of his body, as if sleet had found its way inside his circuits. Exhausted as she was from months of ceaseless tithing, the dead one had not had enough Light to replenish him. Mink stirred, tugging at him in unspoken warning: _it will take time_. They were as hesitant now as they had been to start with, but that would not last.

Efrideet’s triumphant battle cry turned into a shout that caught everyone’s attention. Felwinter half-turned, keeping a hefty portion of his focus on the three he held at bay. Her opponent had taken advantage of her distraction, striking out with spark-haloed fists to drive her back onto uneven ground. _This is why you don’t play with them,_ Felwinter thought grimly, and considered how he might come to her aid without bringing the others down on them both. She regained her footing. Citan’s man gathered himself to spring, electricity crackling over the surface of his armour. Before that charge, Efrideet seemed small. Everyone stood frozen, watching. Efrideet’s spear had gone dark. She stumbled backward, feet failing to find purchase on the loose-packed snow. Felwinter reached out, seeking an avenue via which he could intervene, and felt the shift in her Light mere milliseconds before it happened. As her enemy bore down upon her, lightning-blue and lightning-quick, she ignited in an explosion of gold. The snow melted beneath her heels. Citan’s man must have seen his death coming. He fell, unable to arrest his own momentum, and the spear-tip punched a hole clean through his chest plate. Clean through the five-pointed heart of Citan’s starmount sigil, Felwinter corrected, not without some satisfaction. The symbolism pleased him. He suspected the gore would please Efrideet more.

Efrideet held the man suspended like bait on a hook, her flames highlighting his still form. That unnecessary show of strength would have been the perfect time to strike, but no-one so much as breathed in her direction. Then, in a slow, theatrical movement, she let both spear and corpse fall into the gully.

Her posturing did not distract Felwinter. He was never distracted. It did, however, perhaps cause him to assign rather too much attention to recording the ignominious thud the body made on impact. Some active focus might also have been diverted away from constructing a scenario whereupon he would have both reason and opportunity to play the sound back to Citan. The pleasant little set of images unfolding in his head was interrupted by a wash of icy violet and a stunning blow. Mink interposed herself between him and the pain of a catastrophic systems failure, but not before he had time to emit an embarrassing, crackly wail that must have been audible across the field.

 _Serves us right, really,_ she said, buffering him. Her distress was a knot underneath his jaw. _Shame. I quite liked that hillock over there, the one with those two funny bumps…_ In the distance, he heard a storm’s rising shriek.

Afterward: an incandescent joy.

It was like nothing he’d ever felt. The heat buoyed him up, carrying him to his knees and then on to his feet. He was himself again, or near enough. Mink clicked in wary satisfaction, tugging at his Light. Above his head, an excited little voice was crying, “We won! We won! We won!”

“Yes, yes, very nice,” Mink said, confirming to Felwinter that the voice was not merely a figment of his newly-resurrected imagination. “You can join the rest of us back on earth now.”

“Well!” Alambil said huffily, and zoomed down to hover an inch in front of Felwinter’s face. “I like that. After we gave you our Light and helped you rez him and fought the rest all by ourselves and spilled them all over the snow -“ Exuberance beat pique; she danced a drunken circle around him and shot off again, shouting, “I called it! We won!”

“Didn’t need the assist,” Mink growled after her - and then, so low even Felwinter had to strain to hear it, “But thank you.”

 _Spilled them all over the snow._ Felwinter turned to look. Not far from where he’d risen again, the ground was a mess. Deep furrows marred it, as though someone had been running very fast. Crusts of thick black blood were dotted here and there, in no particular pattern. The presumed architect of it all stood at the centre of her own disaster, keeping a curious silence. Somewhere along the line, her muffler had fallen away.

He called her name, trying to hide the tinge of admiration that had crept into his voice. Citan might keep his people weak, but defeating three experienced fighters as a mere yearling was no less a feat. How had she accomplished it? The tell-tale signs of specific power or weapon usage were absent. There was a stillness about Efrideet’s face as she approached, as eerily uncharacteristic as her quiet. More flakes of Risen blood clung to her clothes. Felwinter doubted much of it was her own.

“They killed you,” she said, as if it were an explanation. As if he were planning to ask for one! A victory was a victory, even if he wished he’d made more of a contribution. She would never let him hear the end of it, he supposed, once she came out of whatever fugue state had overtaken her. He did not recall ever having seen her look tired before.

Her disquiet seemed to be contagious. Without meaning to, he said, “Well done.”

No response, but she straightened up a little. Crossly, she brushed at the end of her scarf and muttered, “Ugh. Why does our blood dry like this?”

Suspecting that it was not a genuine question, Felwinter kept his answer in check. Just then, Mink yelled, “It’s done! You know it’s done. Come back and raise them.”

Felwinter glanced up. A line of Ghosts was skulking its way back onto the battlefield. They gave Alambil, still dancing to a tune quite unlike Efrideet’s, a wide berth. One by one, they split off from the group to seek out their own charges. The ambient Light shifted, wavering through the spectrum as they set about the work of revival. Efrideet tensed.

“At ease,” said Felwinter. “They won’t retaliate now.”

“How do you know?” Efrideet said, but her shoulders relaxed.

“The law -“ he started, but could not say more; Citan’s five, returned to life, were tramping across the snow towards them. He wondered if he had been right to reassure Efrideet. Eisa’s second looked especially thunderous.

At a safe distance, Eisa herself stopped to hail them. “A fair and honest win!” The comment sounded genuine, if grudging. “We yield.”

“Fair?” Eisa’s second growled, scowling at her from underneath brows made heavy by anger. “That animal bit me!”

“So she did,” Alambil agreed, as proud as if he had complimented her charge on some great achievement.

“We just got destroyed one-on-three by a feral child, Lukas,” Eisa said, tone drier than Felwinter’s at its best. The woman behind her stifled a smile. “I think it’s time we cut our losses and crawled off to lick each other’s wounds, don’t you?”

Lukas subsided, but the glare he shot Efrideet could have suffocated a sun-song at its height. Her lack of reaction disturbed Felwinter more than the look itself. Back at the Peak, that sort of insult would have sent her into a fury. Mink hissed at Lukas, a soft, poisonous sound. He froze, startled.

“Give my regards to Citan,” Felwinter said, turning away. He’d earned the right to that casual gesture of disrespect - or rather, Efrideet had. Unprompted, she fell into step beside him. Another worrying sign.

“We will,” Eisa said. There was a definite tinge of amusement to the words. In another life, Felwinter reflected, she might almost have been tolerable. “Give ours to your friends, Iron Lord.”

He let it go. Turning his face toward the distant mountains, he began to walk - would have kept walking, if not for a murmur in the aether. It was no more significant than a candleflame flaring up for an instant, but that instant was enough. He spun on his heel, reached out to the landscape ahead, and pulled. Shouts rang through the air, angry and commanding. They were irrelevant. Mink placed a cool metal object in his hands; he swung it up and let fly at the backlit figure sprinting across the ice field.

It fell. The ball of energy it had been readying itself to throw dissipated, not even melting the snow. Felwinter stood there, all his senses focused on the corpse of Eisa’s second, and let the barrel of his shotgun drift downward in an ostentatious manner.

 _Tricky little bastard,_ Mink said, with deliberate ambiguity. A warm glow of pride emanated from her.

“Lay off the buffer a bit, Orlee,” Eisa said, pitching her voice to carry, “and don’t expect us to help ease his way back. He knows the rules as well as anyone.” Orlee crooned, points drooping. Then, with a forced neutrality, she called, “Do you want his Ghost?”

“Of course not,” Felwinter said, feeling his lights dim in distaste. “Get him off my land.”

“Wasn’t talking to you.” Even at a distance, Eisa’s reluctance was evident. “He was aiming for your young Iron Lord. It’s her call.”

The words did not seem to register straight away. When they did, Efrideet shook her head as if she were exiting a dream and said, “What on earth would I do with her? Is this another one of Citan’s stupid rules?”

“They’re not Citan’s rules, outlaw.” Anger and relief mingled in Eisa’s voice. “Not his, not yours, not mine, and not your lord’s there. We don't question what's been handed down to us.”

“She’ll never tithe to me,” Felwinter said, slinging the shotgun across his back again. “And as far as not asking questions – speak for yourself.”

A faint gasp heralded Lukas’ return to life. Sitting up, he reached for his Ghost in an instinctual gesture Felwinter had seen countless times before. She dropped down toward him as if he were reeling her in on a string; a sharp sound of denial from Eisa made her freeze in midair. Their body language was different, but there was no mistaking the utter misery shared between Risen and Ghost. Felwinter skirted pity, shrugged it off in a spasm of disgust. Every line of Lukas’ body spoke to shame. He scrabbled his way to a standing position and began the long walk back to his companions, head low. It was doubtful he’d find much comfort there, Felwinter thought. Citan’s people followed the letter of the law, if nothing else.

He could not bring himself to say the farewell words appropriate to an honoured enemy, a sentiment Eisa had clearly anticipated. Instead, she bowed from the waist in a gesture of apparent and startling sincerity. After a wait period long enough to make them sweat, he nodded. Let them think he was considering war in response to their insult; better that than to have them dismiss the Iron Lords as weak and undisciplined. Keeping a significant portion of his focus on the terrain behind him – he’d been wrong about their willingness to break the rules once, after all – he fixed his gaze on the north.

 _Second time’s the charm,_ Mink said, crisp. And then: _‘Ware Efrideet._

She was already a few paces ahead. Alambil had taken up a perch in that spot favoured by Ghosts, the crook where neck met shoulder. In a fit of exasperation, Efrideet shrugged her off and said, “No!” She lowered her voice, but did not seem to be aware she was speaking out loud. “No, it wasn’t good. We – we weren’t in control.” On the last word, realisation seemed to overtake her, and she shot a glance back at Felwinter. He could read at least two different emotions in her face; knowing the complexities of human expression, there would be more hidden underneath. The first was a sullen, closed-off embarrassment. The second was a plea. She both wished he would say something and hoped he would not. It was the sort of contradiction some Exos liked to think themselves immune to.

After an ungentle prod from Mink, he said, “Control can be taught. Raw power is far more difficult.”

Her lips twitched, just a little. “Are you volunteering to teach me?”

“I didn’t say that.” Damn it all: he had said _taught_ and not _learned_ , hadn’t he? Efrideet, who latched on to every minor slip-up and gnawed it down to the bone, could not have failed to notice that. The broad smile creeping across her face was all the proof he needed.

“Can you show me how to do that -” She wiggled her fingers, opened and closed her hand several times at speed, then clicked her tongue at his flicker of bafflement. “The blink?”

“You mean the rapid short-distance transversal.”

“Blink,” said Efrideet, folding her arms. “If I'd blinked, I would have missed it. Where did you get a working gun?”

“That’s my business.”

“And my business to find out!” Efrideet agreed, with a cheery nod. For better or worse, she was back to her old self. “You were nowhere near him. What did they call that type of weapon before the Collapse – a sniper rifle?”

“Shotgun,” Felwinter said, shifting his shoulders against the weight of it. “Opposite end of the range spectrum.” Efrideet let out a sceptical huff. “Not that they had much use for ballistics in the Golden Age. What little evidence we have suggests –“ He ground to a halt, appalled at himself. Efrideet’s grin had grown even wider. 

“Are you going to teach me history, as well?” She paused, considering. “I mean, part of me thinks that would be dull enough to drive me off the Peak. But I’ll try to listen. I like you. We’re the same.” She broke into a jog, heedless of the stunned expression painting itself across Felwinter’s face.

 _We’re the same._ He might have asked her to explain herself. He might have pointed out that there could be very few similarities between an undersocialised wildling and a true Risen Lord. He might have done – but he knew what she meant, and to pretend otherwise would be a level of dishonesty beyond even his ken. 

Pure scientific curiosity had driven him to follow the Ghost. In all his wanderings, he’d never seen the resurrection process play out from beginning to end. He’d tailed her all the way to the western border; Mink, with uncharacteristic earnestness, had urged him to keep a respectful distance. When they reached the broken bridge, he had stopped far enough away to observe while still granting her sufficient space to work. As many times as he’d walked past it, he had never detected the slightest shred of power in any of the anonymous, frozen parts that lay half-buried there. The Ghost saw further. She conducted a comprehensive survey of the wreckage, stacking the sad, desiccated pieces she retrieved on a patch of ground she’d cleared for the purpose. Felwinter had wondered why. Very little material was required to raise a Lightbearer, and she wasn’t using them to create a recognisable framework. The skull came last, scraps of skin and hair still clinging to it. It wasn’t one of the dead faces he’d come to know, grinning up at him as he went about his rounds. This head must have been luckier in its not-so-final resting place. Without ceremony, the Ghost dropped it on top of the heap. Then she withdrew to a greater height, as if to admire her own handiwork. 

A whisper of Light stirred within the remains, like water trickling beneath ice. Felwinter had been aware of what he was watching in the abstract; the reality of it hit him all at once. He was about to witness the total reconstruction of a person. That person could be anyone. They might be hostile, or friendly, or expect him to act as some sort of guide to life… Sheer stubbornness kept him crouching where he was. In any case, it was too late to retreat. The final stage happened all at once. Light fountained up through the bones, so bright even his sensors were unable to filter it. Thus overwhelmed, he could not stop himself from reaching out. He touched it, felt it begin to take on colour and shape. Below the brilliance, helices spun and metabolic processes fired. Impossible, he found himself thinking: quite impossible. Of course, it wasn’t. Mink had done the inorganic equivalent to him.

When the light dimmed to manageable levels, his first impression was of a figure swathed in tatty cloaks and mufflers. The Ghost had clearly gone overboard in her concern for her charge’s temperature regulation. A pair of human-dark eyes regarded him, almost invisible underneath the top cloak’s heavy hood. There was no need to weigh the merits of speaking versus remaining silent. In a blink, the newborn was up and away, hurdling obstacles like a frightened deer. Without sparing a second glance for either him or Mink, the Ghost followed.

That was that. Or it had been, until the Iron Lords had shown up with a proposition and a seeming mandate to throw his neatly-ordered existence into turmoil. He’d spotted a familiar pair of eyes among the group; the newborn stray had attached herself to them, but not quite become affiliated. Since then, Felwinter had had cause to wonder whether some sort of imprinting process might have occurred at the moment of Efrideet’s rebirth. No matter how cold, distant, or outright offputting the demeanour he sought to project was, she continued to trail along in his wake like an exceptionally stubborn shadow. Open rudeness, such as he’d displayed when she’d asked to accompany him on patrol, did not deter her in the slightest.

_(“Why don’t you go and bother Saladin? Silimar? They indulge you."_

_“They’re busy. I can't do carving or masonry or architecture, so I'm no use to them.”_

__

__

_“What can you do?”_

_A flash of teeth. “I can hunt.”)_

“Hurry up!” Felwinter always assigned a percentage of his attention to the surrounding environment before he let himself get lost in thought, but the yell still made him start. Showing an impressive level of commitment to obnoxious behaviour, Efrideet had chosen to run backward just in order to glare at him. “It’s past lunchtime. They’ll be halfway to stories by now.”

“I doubt I’ve been missed,” Felwinter said. The note of bitterness was clearer than he’d wanted it to be.

“Because you don’t eat, or because you think they all hate you?”

If she thought to disarm him with bluntness, she had another think coming. Felwinter did not reply.

“Jolder served a warlord.” This was unexpected enough that Felwinter came to an abrupt halt, sending up a little puff of snow in his wake. Efrideet stopped, too, but her scowl did not shift. “Perun strategised for one. Skorri and Radegast once razed half a fiefdom.” She set her jaw. “And I stole food from mortals, when I was lost and alone. They never even saw me. All of us have more power than we deserve, I think.”

Felwinter was silent. Mink brushed across the surface of his mind like a feather cast adrift, but offered no comment.

“Everybody likes you,” Efrideet said, in the manner of one pronouncing a final judgement. “But it wouldn't matter if they didn't. Mortal families aren't always fond of each other, are they?” With that, she stalked off, not even troubling to look back at the turmoil he knew would be uncomfortably evident on his face. 

To the north, a clot of yellow storm-clouds was circling lower. The distant mountaintops were strung about with them: some thick and ragged, others as delicate as old, mouldering lace. _Do you love the Peak?_ Lady Jolder had asked, once. When he’d turned to her, lights flaring in annoyance at the question’s insipid nature, she’d amended: _I mean, do you only love it because it’s yours?_ Perhaps she was in the middle of a climb now, seeking a route to the top not even he had found. Perhaps they all were. They might be following Lady Skorri’s lead in a song, or listening to one of Lord Gheleon’s strange tales, or heckling their way through another of Lord Radegast’s expansive post-prandial speeches…

He set his sights on Efrideet’s dwindling back – and, beyond her, home.


End file.
